Secrets to Starting a Dumpster Rental Business

Absolutely. I want to hear about your dumpster rental business.

Okay. Yeah, I've been in business for about six weeks now. Took quite a while to get funding for the dumpsters and the truck and everything. So I ended up flying into Texas, buying a truck and 11 dumpsters and driving them back to Salt Lake. And we have had those for about six weeks now. Things are going really well, but I mostly just wanted to pick your brain about some unique ways to market to either contractors or builders and get some more like long term contracts. Most of our customers right now are homeowners, which is been great, but we're spending a fortune on Google Ads and those traditional marketing channels. And so I wanted to pick your brain about landing commercial jobs working with general contractors or builders or there's anybody like pulling permits. I've thought about marketing to want to just get some of your advice on that.

So you just went ahead and bought a truck, like I assume a truck to move these things around, plus 11 dumpsters in Texas and just started from scratch or is this a business that you bought?

Started from scratch? Yeah. Wow.

Okay. What about the industry or business made you want to just go all in on this? And I like the business too, don't get me wrong. I'm just curious what your mindset is.

Yeah, so I've been flipping houses for the last three or four years and had to rent them all the time and started just running the numbers on them. And you can buy a dumpster for probably all in. After painting and decals, you're like 5,500 bucks and you can rent them out for 350 a week. It's also just really like operationally it's pretty simple. Right now I've got a full time driver and then a full time office manager that takes calls and schedules. So operationally it's pretty simple to scale. But the biggest thing is it's just really capital intensive. That's the biggest downside. But yeah, that was most of the appeal is I've paid for them all the time and they're pretty profitable.

Okay, what percentage of capacity are you right now with your 11 dumpsters?

It depends on the week. So like last I think 2 Fridays ago it was really warm out and we hit max capacity. We all of the dumpsters were out of our yard, but earlier this week we were at 0%, you know, capacity, so we didn't have anything booked. And then this Friday it's warm again. So we've got a lot. So that's one reason I'm wanting to Move more into the commercial space is they're a lot more consistent. A lot of these weekend warriors want to rent one when the sun comes out. I've got 12 more dumpsters coming on the 15th, so I'm really going to need to increase my, my bookings in order to, to accommodate those.

How much do these cost? You said 500, but is that what these cost?

No, they cost like 5500. Once everything's said 500.

Yeah, about 6000. Okay, six grand apiece. Okay. And you're ordering them because it's been going and it's in Utah and the weather's warming up and you want to grow your business.

Yeah. Right.

Okay. How have you been finding customers so far?

90% has just been Google Ads. We've done quite a bit of, we're just cranking out cold calls every single day, doing a lot of just like networking with realtors and moving companies. But primarily Google Ads has been all of our. We're starting to get some traction with SEO and we're starting to rank on like the Google map pack. So we've been making some progress on those fronts. But primarily Google Ads, which is pretty expensive. I think we're spending about 200 a day on Google Ads.

And what is that? Are you able to attribute it correctly? So, you know, like, how much in Google Ads equates to a rental?

Yeah, so $200 in Google Ad spends usually can book me about one and a half to two rentals a day.

Okay. So we're talking 700 or 1,000 bucks.

In revenue somewhere around there. Yeah, assuming that we can maintain that. And I think that'll. Yeah, that's, that's a goal for this year once I have those other dumpsters come in.

Okay. Theoretically, as you scale the ad campaign, it'll get less efficient, but it's also getting warmer. So is it reasonable to assume if you were to, to spend a thousand a day, that it would still be somewhat profitable as the weather warms up, but not as I would think.

So the more I increase the budget, I've already noticed, like my cost per click starts to go up a little bit. My conversions are a little bit more expensive. The nice part is as long as I'm getting like one and a half to two bookings a day, that covers all of my fixed costs. So the vast majority of my expenses are fixed. Like I've got to pay a full time office person, full time driver, my yard rentals, 1200 bucks a month, my loans on the equipment. So once all that's covered, my margins get significantly better. So even if my ad spend efficiency goes down, it would still be worth it.

Okay, and what percentage of your business is coming from Google Ads today?

90%.

Okay. So cold calls aren't yielding much fruit yet.

They haven't. We've been cold calling primarily like roofers, remediation companies, home builders. And no, we haven't had any luck with it. We've probably done, I don't know, 200, 300 cold calls at this point. A lot of them either already have a dumpster guy that they're using, like already have a contract with somebody that's set up. So that's one thing we've been running into. We can try and compete on price, but a lot of these guys have larger operations so they can run at smaller margins.

Are you willing to tell me what your website is so I can pull that up? Yeah, it's co. How easy is it or hard to change the pricing on your website on any given time?

Yeah. Would take two minutes and it.

Are you not concerned about that? Would it not cause friction with current customers or is it not a big deal?

No, we don't have very many repeat customers. Most of them are like one off homeowners that are find us on from a Google Ad search or on the map pack and are just booking once we have a couple repeat customers, but.

Okay. Do you know how much you compete with those Baxter bags at Home Depot at all? I don't know how you measure that, but they're a lot smaller than what you're renting. I know that.

Yeah. Yeah. So we have 20 cubic yard dumpsters. So they're pretty large.

Okay. And are most of these homeowners just doing like bathroom remodels and stuff or is it bigger stuff?

Yeah, a lot of them are either just like garage cleanouts or some sort of smaller renovation.

Okay.

Or a lot of them are.

Okay. Have you thought of trying to partner with the junk hauling companies in the area?

I've given it a little bit of thought. I actually called a junk removal guy yesterday to see if we could set up some kind of like a referral program. The larger junk hauling, like junk removal guys. So you've got like 1, 800, got junk and junk kings and those types of like franchise models. Those guys have their own dumpsters that they'll rent out on occasion. The guy that I talked to yesterday was mid sized, so he doesn't have dumpsters. But he said usually if you get somebody that's requesting a dumpster, he'll just try and talk them into doing a junk removal job. And he can usually for a slightly higher price than a dumpster will just go out. And a lot of those junk removal guys work really cheap. They don't seem to make a ton of money. So I think they're willing to take a cut in price and make it worth it for their customer.

Have you gone the handyman route and scraped a list of handymen or general contractors specifically more smaller ones to do outreach to them?

We haven't. Most of the people we've been reaching out to are larger companies like large remediation. Because my first thought was I want to land as big of a contract as I can. So mostly like larger remediation, roofing and home builders. But that might. I haven't really given that much thought, but that might be some lower hanging fruit.

Yeah. The hard part with those guys is they can be sometimes hard to find. A lot of those handyman and contractors, like they don't have a website, they're not even on Google Maps. They just get business from referrals and you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, absolutely.

Have you noticed on your Google Ads a time of day or week when you're busier or slower, like when is the demand? Is it like on a Thursday before the weekend or is there no correlation?

There's a lot of correlation. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are wild. Like today I've got I think four drop offs. Yesterday we had two or three. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are crazy. Monday and Tuesday are pretty slow. And a lot of that is because I'm working primarily with homeowners that just want a warm weekend where they can do a garage clean out or tear down that deck or whatever it is. And that's one reason why I do want to go the commercial route a little bit more is because they're a little bit more consistent. If it's raining out, they're not going to stop their project. Or so that's one thing we. It's very varies a lot between Monday and Tuesday is dead and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is just crazy to where we run out of dumpsters.

Okay. Do you have to rent these or could you sell them as well?

Sell the dumpsters?

Yeah. Is that even an option or is the margin not there?

If I were to sell them, it would just be to like another dumpster.

Company or just a commercial business. Right. That needs an extra one permanently.

Yeah.

And that have to go through the trash company.

They would need somebody to empty it. I could sell it to them. And then just service it on a monthly basis. So usually like we've got one guy up in Park City right now that we have a monthly contract with. So him, for example, we charge 550 bucks a month, and that includes one empty. And then if he needs us to come out and empty before that, we can do a swap for 200 bucks. So those are usually how those types of contracts work. I'm sure. I know there's some people that will like fabrication shops will buy a dumpster that's for like metal recycling, and then somebody will come empty it for free. But primarily it's more of a rental.

And the guy in Park City, what is his use for this dumpster?

He does build outs for commercial spaces. So he's doing like a commercial build out on the shopping center right now.

Okay, so you've been trying to find more guys like him?

Yeah. The nice part about guys like him, and especially as we get more dumpsters, is like we've been having to go the residential route right now because we only have 11 dumpsters, so we have to turn these things really quickly. But the nice part about those commercial guys is he takes the exact amount of work as a residential person. So, for example, a lot of residential guys, I'll cut them a deal if they're doing like a three day booking and they'll pay 299. This commercial guy, he keeps the dumpster for a month, but he pays me 550. So it's the exact same amount of work. And the, the additional 200 bucks is just pure profit. The downside is I've got that dumpster tied up. So ideally what I could do is over time shift more and more to commercial as I get more equipment. And eventually that's primarily where I'd like to be and then do some residential jobs here and there. But those jobs are, they're significantly more profitable. But if I only did commercial jobs, I wouldn't pay the bills because I'd be booked out. Whereas with the residential jobs, some of these dumpsters, I can turn two or three times a week. So it's more work, but more profit.

Okay, all right. I think I've got some ideas. If you're spending six grand a month, and I don't know if you think how I think, but this is how I think. I never want to hire an agency for anything because I don't want to pay one to four grand a month for anything. But then I'll just, I'll dump $200 a day into Google Ads. And it just seems totally different to me. And really it's. That's three agencies. So I don't know if you think like that, but I think you would be pretty well served to find a GMB agency to organically increase your map pack ranking over time. And I feel like you're in this for the long haul, no pun intended. And you're willing to make investments today to grow your business six months from now, which is why you bought all these new dumpsters. But I think that would really help. It's not going to move the needle today, but I think a lot of these agencies are 1000 to 1500 bucks a month and they work like, of all the agencies you could hire, it's a lot of times with any agency, it's, is this guy, Is this even working? But with gmb, it's very clear you can see your ranking improve on certain terms. I would try that. There's a. I've tweeted quite a bit about it. If you do an advanced search under my name for home service, I've tweeted quite a bit about improving your map pack ranking and all that. I would try that. I would also experiment with surge pricing. I would be willing, if I were you, to really drop your prices during those low demand times and see if you convert a lot better directly from Google. That's the great thing about cold traffic to a website is you can play around with your prices all you want and no one's going to care. No one's going to remember, no one's going to care. I've always wanted to buy a hotel just so I could experiment with surge pricing, like to an extreme, where it's like, all right, I know that my cleaner is going to take an hour to clean this room. I pay her 18 bucks an hour, so my hard cost is 18 bucks. All right. Our hotel is normally 130 a night, but if I'm not 100% occupied, I'm going to charge 30 until someone books it because then I have an email address that I could market to them every month. I still make a $10 profit because those empty rooms are just throwing money away. Yeah, I would experiment with something drastic like that, where you even increase the prices on the weekend and maybe they convert the same and you drop them like significantly just to learn. Even if you're losing money during the week when you know, like, realistically, I'm not going to get any conversions today. Just play around with it and see what if it works. What do you think? About that.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great idea. And then even if I'm breaking even on a couple of bookings on a Monday or Tuesday and I get a shorter booking, it's better than them sitting in the yard. I've got these things, they're like a really bright blue color and they're all decal and everything. So they're like a moving billboard. So if I could move them around town and keep. I've got my driver there at the yard full time anyways. So if I'm just trying to find things for him to do, he might as well be breaking even on a delivery. And that way we can remarket to that person a lot of times their neighbors will call based on the. We've got it. We've got like a QR code and our phone number and everything in these dumpsters. So they're like a moving billboard. So if we can, I love it. Have that added benefit and then also remarket to that person and keep my guys busy, then I think that's a great idea.

Yeah, I love that. Did you ever see that Dollar Shave Club viral commercial from 10 years ago, 15 years ago?

I've seen a couple of them.

It was the original one. It was the guy in a warehouse. It's really funny. I would go use that as a case study and put a little money into making a 60 second video that you can put right on your homepage of just use something funny and endearing. You sitting in a dumpster or sitting on a stack of dumpsters, maybe right when they arrive, just like climbing up there, getting a video, a very professional one, saying just what am I gonna do with all these dumpsters? I've got 26 dumpsters or whatever. Like what am I gonna do with them? And that's let people see your personality right there on the homepage. And I think that will really help because this is a commodity and it's man, I could pay 400 bucks to this commodity or, or I could pay 450 bucks to Bailey and he seems cool and funny and I like this guy. Yeah, I think that would help conversion on your landing page because if you're relying that much on cold traffic, then every little tweak you make on your landing page is going to make a big difference. So you can play around with keywords and all that stuff inside of Google, but I would focus more efforts on your actual website to better convert the traffic that gets there. And then I would take the efforts or money or manpower that you're spending on cold calling and just divert that to more digital efforts for at least a couple weeks. Posting on nextdoor, posting in local Facebook groups, buy, sell groups, mom groups, anything. Posting on ksl, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace. And just don't cold call for a while. See how that goes. But specifically, tell your story. I'm a Utah entrepreneur, and I put all this money into to drive to Texas and to buy a truck and 11 dumpsters so I could better serve the valley with dumpsters. Tell your story and people will read it. Like, they'll keep reading to the end, and then they'll feel like they know you and they like you. And it. It seems kitschy and, like, silly, but I promise you it works. Like, when we do our cold outreach, we tell our. The story of James my. My tree biz operator. Just graduated from college, moved to Texas, started, like, people love it. They want to support you as a person, but if you're just a business, a faceless business. I know your face is on the website, which is awesome. I would do the same thing. Then it's. You're just any other dumpster rental company.

Yeah, that's a great idea. I didn't even think of that. But anybody I've told that story because I flew out to Dallas and had to move all these dumpsters around so they could get shipped. Put one on the back. I'd never driven anything more than a pickup truck, so I drove it 26 hours back to Salt Lake. Anybody I've told that story is pretty interested or think it's funny or engaging. So I guess that's not a bad idea.

Exactly. Yeah. And then I would get. I would scrape a list of all the handymen, general contractors, everything. Then you can start doing cold outreach to them. Cold call, text, email, or going to their website, submitting the contact us form, and then just keep going the realtor and the commercial realtor route for referrals. Because I think you're on the right track there. I would just pause it for a while to try these other things before revisiting it. Yeah, I think you'll find success there.

Awesome. Yeah, those are some great ideas. Yeah. You're a genius.